Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views

224 Pages·2.61 MB·English

by  James K. Beilby, Paul Rhodes Eddy, Gregory A. Boyd, David Hunt, William Lane Craig, Paul Helm

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D
IVINE
F
OREKNOWLEDGE
F o u r V i e w s
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY
Gregory A. Boyd, David Hunt,
William Lane Craig, Paul Helm
EDITED BY
JAMES K. BEILBY
& PAUL R. EDDY
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InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
E-mail: [email protected]
©2001 by James K. Beilby, Paul R. Eddy, Gregory A. Boyd, William Lane Craig, Paul Helm & David Hunt
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from
InterVarsity Press.
InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of
students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the
United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.
For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian
Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at
<www.intervarsity.org>.
Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible,
copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover images: hand reaching up: Skip Odonnell/iStockphoto;
gold wall: naphtalina/iStockphoto
ISBN 978-0-8308-7493-4 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-2652-0 (print)
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Dedicated to our wives,
Michelle Beilby and Kelly Eddy
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CONTENTS
Introduction___________________________________________________________ 9
1 THE OPEN-THEISM VIEW Gregory A. Boyd _______________________________ 13
A Simple-Foreknowledge Response____________________________________ 48
A Middle-Knowledge Response________________________________________ 55
An Augustinian-Calvinist Response_____________________________________ 61
2 THE SIMPLE-FOREKNOWLEDGE VIEW David Hunt__________________________ 65
An Open-Theism Response__________________________________________ 104
A Middle-Knowledge Response_______________________________________ 109
An Augustinian-Calvinist Response____________________________________ 114
3 THE MIDDLE-KNOWLEDGE VIEW William Lane Craig _____________________ 119
An Open-Theism Response__________________________________________ 144
A Simple-Foreknowledge Response___________________________________ 149
An Augustinian-Calvinist Response____________________________________ 155
4 THE AUGUSTINIAN-CALVINIST VIEW Paul Helm___________________________ 161
An Open-Theism Response__________________________________________ 190
A Simple-Foreknowledge Response___________________________________ 195
A Middle-Knowledge Response_______________________________________ 202
Glossary____________________________________________________________ 207
Subject Index________________________________________________________ 215
Scripture Index ______________________________________________________ 219
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Introduction
Throughout the history of the church, Christians have discussed the nature and
content of God’s foreknowledge. For instance, one finds Augustine wrestling
with this question in part three of his famous work Freedom of the Will. In
recent years, the debate over the foreknowledge of God has come to be one of
the most controversial theological issues disputed among evangelicals. Indeed,
some claim it is the most heated controversy to hit evangelicalism since the
inerrancy debate of the 1970s. One distinctive aspect of this contemporary
debate is that it is taking place not only in elite theological circles, but also in
churches, on campuses, at denominational conferences and in popular Chris-
tian magazines.
To understand why this debate has assumed the proportions it has within
contemporary evangelicalism, one must realize that the question is not simply
about the nature of divine foreknowledge. Rather, for many this issue has
become a theological lightning rod, largely due to the implications this ques-
tion has for other areas of theology. At least three fundamental theological
areas are involved in this debate. First, and most immediately, there is the
question of the nature and mode of God's foreknowledge. Second, in the eyes
of many, there are important implications for the question of the nature of
divine sovereignty (i.e., whether God's sovereignty operates in a general or in
a particular and meticulous fashion). Finally, there are direct implications for
the question of the nature of human freedom (i.e., whether humans possess
compatibilistic or libertarian freedom). Further, each of these theological ques-
tions plays an essential role in the articulation of a stance on the “problem of
evil.”
The primary catalyst for the contemporary discussion has been the recent
debate concerning what has come to be called open theism. According to its
adherents, God knows the future partly as a realm of possibilities, not exclu-
sively as settled facts. Much of the contemporary foreknowledge debate
remains centered on the openness controversy, but this controversy has also
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10 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE
fueled the debate that has existed for centuries among more traditional Chris-
tian theologians. Though many laypersons remain unaware of this fact, Chris-
tian theologians throughout church history have entertained a diversity of
opinions on the nature and content of God’s foreknowledge. This book has
been written to bring clarity to the contemporary discussion by presenting the
four major views that scholars in the evangelical community embrace. These
four views are the open view, the simple-foreknowledge view, the middle-
knowledge view and the Augustinian-Calvinist view.
Gregory Boyd begins by defending the open view. This view has been rela-
tively rare in church history, but it is gaining popularity today in certain sectors
of evangelicalism. Unlike the other three views represented in this book, the
open view holds that the future is partly open to God, for God cannot fore-
know the decisions that free agents shall make. God is omniscient, this view
insists, for he perfectly knows all reality. But the reality God perfectly knows is
partly composed of possibilities, “maybes.” Hence, while God knows much of
the future as settled—for he can sovereignly decide to settle whatever he
wishes—he knows some of the future as a “maybe.” Boyd argues that only this
view can make good sense out of passages in the Bible in which God changes
his mind, regrets decisions he makes, speaks of the future in conditional terms,
expresses surprise or disappointment over what transpires, or tests people’s
hearts “to know” what they shall do.
The second essay is by David Hunt, who defends the simple-foreknowledge
view. Scholars debate how traditional or nontraditional the simple-foreknowl-
edge view is, but unquestionably it has a number of learned advocates today.
Those who believe in simple foreknowledge maintain that God “simply”
knows what is going to come to pass. Unlike the open view, the simple-fore-
knowledge view rejects the notion that any aspect of the future is open from
God’s perspective. Unlike the middle-knowledge view, this view does not hold
that God chose which future to bring about based on his knowledge of how
free agents would act in any “possible world.” And unlike the Augustinian-Cal-
vinist view, this view doesn’t hold that God knows the future because he pre-
ordains it. God simply knows what free agents shall do, not what they would
do in different circumstances or what he ordains them to do. According to
Hunt, this view is consistent with what Scripture says about God’s foreknowl-
edge and is the most philosophically defensible position to hold.
The third essay is by William Lane Craig, who defends the middle-knowl-
edge, or Molinist, view. Scholars debate the extent to which this view was pre-
supposed by various theologians in church history (some interesting current
research suggests that Jacobus Arminius held a position similar to Molinism),